Was wondering if others have experienced a reduction in up and download speeds for Virgin broadband. Started having email send and receive issues and was advised to do the speed test only to discover mine has dropped from 3.4 and 0.67Mbs to 1.92 and 0.288Mbs.

thanks

It's not limited to Virgin, I am on Tiscali/Homechoice/TalkTalk and the speeds have been up and down over the last few days like a Jack in a box. Anything from .5Meg to my normal 6.5Meg.

Since Virgin uses cable and Tiscali use BT lines, it's just co-incidence.

Bandwidth throttling and contention ratios (number of people using a single exchange connection) are usually to blame.

Tiscali/Homechoice/TalkTalk are not known to offer the best contention ratios.

I'm currently in the process of switching to Virgin to get 10Mbs. If I don't get well over 2Mbs at all times I will be very disappointed and will be complaining.
I only switched to BT so that I can have a 291 telephone number!

Why no switch to Be/O2 and get 15 Mbps like me

Be also give you a free day on your birthday - nice touch.

Sorry NF, I hate O2 with a passion.

Unusual for my connection to be bad, I know it does happen but it is unusual. Sky is tempting me though. broadband, phone and HD telly...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Then go with Be and get their customer service instead. My broadband has been reliable and CustSvc have been helpful (with a Bulgarian accent) on the odd occasion I needed it. Although O2 uses Be's equipment and Be is now owned by Telefonica (as is O2) they are still separate organisations.

You are undoubtably right but the problems the other half and I have had with O2 have got to the point where I wouldnt go within a million miles of anything to do with O2 (or their affiliates).

Despite Be now being owned by O2. I've found their connection and service to be very good indeed. They have a low contention ratio, and still have what appears to be a dedicated service team.

They've also been good at offering us cheaper deals when we considered leaving.

I don't work for Be

Ive recently switched from Home choice/tiscali/talk talk (which was a real palarva) to O2 and have nothing but praise for them. The speed is consistently fast, and we can stream HD video while surfing and having internet radio on in the house without any buffering problems.

One thing to note - Virgin don't use cable exclusively in SE23 - check what you're signing up for since it may be a DSL-based (copper wire) solution.

If possible, I think you'll probably want a provider which is running a service outside the BT local loop (someone like O2/Be may be your best bet).

As an ex FH pat, I really dont know what your internet connections are like, I now live in Tooting and used to have Virgin Broadband, in about March/April last year that said that the download speed was going up, I had nothing but trouble from that day on, most of the time, I could not even get connected, after a couple of months and many quarrels with Virgin, I packed it in and now have TMobile - the one where you have mobile broadband, no problems at all

The virgin broadband I had was not cable, it had to be plugged into the phone socket